


Seventh Night

by anneapocalypse



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, Hanukkah, Holidays, Jewish Character, Jewish Holidays, Judaism, Post-War, Religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-09
Updated: 2017-01-09
Packaged: 2018-09-14 21:08:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9203207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anneapocalypse/pseuds/anneapocalypse
Summary: After the war, Carolina looks to reconnect with her Jewish roots.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [runawayballista](http://archiveofourown.org/users/runawayballista) and [amutemockingjay](http://archiveofourown.org/users/amutemockingjay) for giving this fic a look over for the Jewish elements. Any remaining errors are mine.

 

It takes Carolina until the seventh night to work up the nerve to go. Vanessa’s reassured her, over and over, not to worry—she’s Buddhist herself, but there are lots of Reform folks among the Republic’s ranks, and she knows them like family, swears up and down Carolina would be welcome.

Still.

It’s just been… a really long time. Before Freelancer.

It’s weird. She used to be so mad at Dad for not taking her anymore after Mom died. Letting them lose touch with everyone they knew there, cutting her off from something that could’ve helped her remember. She started going again sometimes when she was away at school—there was a campus synagogue, some of her classmates went too. But it wasn’t the same. Her memories are so blurry now, but she knows they went regularly when she was little—even when Mom was away. But then Mom didn’t come home, and then they didn’t go to temple anymore.

Now she’s almost glad Dad never wanted to take her. Because it mostly doesn’t make her think of _him_ , anymore. Most of what she remembers, the light slanting through the colored glass windows, the candles, the words in Hebrew and English on the pages of the prayer book—most of it’s Mom to her, fuzzy as those memories may be. A strong hand on her shoulder when she got fidgety in the seat, and the sound of her mother’s bright singing voice.

 _Furious they assailed us,_  
_But Thine arm availed us,_  
_And Thy Word Broke their sword_  
_When our own strength failed us._

Hanukkah’s usually an at-home thing, but home is still… sort of communal, these days, as they all struggle to find the next step forward. With Armonia destroyed mere months ago, and the future still uncertain, they’ve gathered into de facto little communes around some of the old rural infrastructure that escaped total destruction in the war. In what was once a farming town called Descant, an intact synagogue still stands, and in recent weeks has come back into use. Carolina’s driven past it any number of times on the old Mongoose Katie fixed up for her, and after the fifth or sixth time Vanessa caught her eyeing the place, she said gently, “You know, you can go, if you want to.”

 

Carolina heads for the back of the sanctuary on instinct, keeping her eyes down. Most people are clustered in the front, though, and to sit _all_ the way in the back would draw even more attention to herself. A few heads turn as she passes. Even out of armor, it’s hard for her to keep a low profile anywhere on Chorus. To be expected. What she doesn’t expect is the familiar face she spots at the back of the small crowd—a face _not_ looking at her, instead thumbing quietly through a prayer book, head slightly bowed. He’s wearing one of the provided white kippahs over his ash-blonde hair, grown out dark at the roots.

Carolina almost turns on her heel right then and there. But she’s already been seen, if not by him, and if she feels uncertain of her place here, it seems far more rude to walk out now that she’s come in.

She takes a deep breath, and slides into the pew.

Wash’s eyes widen slightly and he’s definitely surprised to see her, though he tamps it down pretty quick and his face returns to a careful neutral before cracking a half-smile. “Chag Sameach.”

“Chag Sameach,” Carolina echoes, self-conscious of her pronunciation. “Didn’t know you were. Ah. Observant.”

Wash shrugs. “I am sort of, I guess. It’s been a while. Didn’t know you were.”

“I’m not.” Maybe I want to be, she thinks, but she’s still sort of shaky on that. Not sure she wants to say it out loud yet. She looks up at the eternal flame, the small but persistent light flickering behind red glass, set in the center of a gold star of David. Wonders when they rekindled it—or if it’s kept lit somehow, miraculously, all this time while the war raged outside the walls.

“I don’t—believe in God,” she confesses, stiffly, and then feels kind of guilty for saying it out loud.

Wash nods. “Not sure I do either.”

Carolina nods, slowly.

Wash turns his gaze forward, tilts his head slightly. “Not sure that’s the most important part.”

She figures not. It probably wasn’t for Mom, in hindsight. Looking back, Carolina realizes she honestly has no idea whether her mother believed in God. She certainly believed in something she found inside that synagogue. God might’ve been it. Might not’ve been it. Even her dad—well, she thinks she can remember seeing something in his eyes, once or twice, when they sang. A softening of some kind.

Then again, maybe it’s just what she’d like to remember.

She shakes her head, then realizes that it looks like she’s shaking her head at Wash. Fortunately when she sneaks a glance at him, he’s not looking at her.

“Yeah,” she says simply. “Maybe.”

The woman who steps forward Carolina recognizes as one of the New Republic’s chaplains—Rabbi Emma, Carolina thinks, though she isn’t certain. She wears ordinary street clothes—everyone has to make do with what they can find, these days—but with a blue and white prayer shawl draped neatly over her shoulders.

Carolina thumbs for the page called out in the prayer book. She can’t really read the Hebrew, but she can hear Wash speaking some of the words aloud next to her and some of them are familiar, particularly the blessing for the menorah lighting, _Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam…_

With the kindling of the lights one by one from the shamash, something does pull in her chest, a little. Some memory, or maybe not just one. Her father holding the shamash, lighting the first candle, her mother explaining that the miracle wasn’t just the oil lasting for eight nights, but the Jewish people triumphing over their oppressors. It means we can win, she said softly over her daughter’s shoulder where little Mallory sat fidgeting in her lap. Even when the odds are against us, we can win. Looking up, she remembers with a painful clarity the pinch of her father’s brow in the candlelight.

She thinks of Chorus, too, as they begin to sing, though she keeps silent, too self-conscious of her singing voice to join in. The Republic’s angry young rebels, the Federation’s bitter young loyalists. Hargrove, Felix and Locus, the pirates, the troops dropping all in black from the sky. She thinks of that moment when the mechs stood still. Then the moment when the Reds and Blues descended in a Hornet piloted by Grif, disembarking with Tucker in the lead, his helmet off and his eyes wide with the thrill and terror she knew so well—a victory so close you can still taste death. The losses still heavy like bruises that won’t fade. Like a tingle in your head that won’t quite dissipate in the silence left behind.

And the sensation of falling that still, still tears at her in dreams and in the moments the panic starts to creep back. Even now, in survival. Even in victory.

She thinks of the Chorus soldiers, Feds and rebels alike, dropping their weapons, taking off their helmets, embracing one another with shouts and sobs and near-hysterical laughter. _We won._

She watches the thin white candles flickering, seven in a row and the shamash set higher on one end, only one spot still empty at the other, and she listens to the voices around her lift in unison with the familiar words.


End file.
